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New display at museum lets visitors experience what it’s like to be a conductor

Pretty cool project out of Germany at the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Museum—there, design studio White Void has created an interactive installation set-up that lets visitors experience what its like to be the conductor of an entire symphony.

The entire set-up is controlled vis-à-vis a special, electronic conductor’s baton. When in use, it controls 13 slim standing speakers, with each one representing a different types of instruments; also included: motion controllers, and a conductor’s stand with a 32-inch touchscreen.

What with this being a blog for a portable speaker company, we have to focus a bit on this particular technology: each speaker corresponds to different types of instruments, including those from the woodwind section, percussion, brass, vocals, and more. Additionally, each speaker has a vertical digital display that shows what type of instruments it playing, and lights up when in use.

The touchscreen conductor’s stand shows the music sheet, and visitors can browse through the collection to select the song they want to play. As soon as he / she picks up the baton, the symphony begins.

The visitor controls which types of instruments are spotlighted with the baton, as well as for how long, and how fast the tempo can be. (A Leap Motion controller is tasked with calculating the conductor’s movements and adjusts the tempo accordingly.) The conductor can also exclude different instrument groups, and change instrumentation or tonality as well (these particular features are done via the touchscreen).